Two green things

First green thing

Well, it turns out that my green card is green, after all. The white one was a temporary one-year one. My permanent one arrived 2 or 3 weeks after it. Husband's temporary and permanent ones arrived on the same day. Can't help thinking they could save themselves some work there...

Anyway, my green card now lives in my wallet (which is also green, incidentally). That's purse, to you Brits, though not to you Americans, for whom a purse is a handbag... Got that? I'm required to be able to produce it at all times. Otherwise, I will disappear in a puff of green smoke. It's in a special little envelope that looks as if it's lined with aluminium foil, which has printed on it:

'We recommend use of this envelope to protect your new card and to prevent wireless communication with it.'

Stop the world, I'm getting off. Are you telling me that people can effect identity theft by waving some wireless gadget at my green card when it's not even visible? I can't keep up with modern life. Can they remove my kidneys wirelessly as I walk round Wal-mart too? Is it safe to go out? Is it even safe to stay in? Aaaargh...

Second green thing

This blog. What am I going to do with it? Clearly it needs revamping in a big way. The design is out of the dark ages. You know, like... like... 2009 or something. I love wittering my heart out here, and it doesn't cease to amaze me that people read it and keep coming back for more. But I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable these days. There's a heck of a lot of very personal stuff on this blog, and I guess my boundaries are shrinking back a little. Which is probably a good sign - a sign of life returning to normal, perhaps. When you're in the middle of a life crisis, it all goes a bit weird. I have to confess that now, I'm not entirely comfortable in my own blog.

Cyber Mummy marked the end of my era of true anonymity, though I'd given away little pieces of it here and there before then, to virtual friends and real ones. It makes writing a blog feel different. I also realised at Cyber Mummy that if I'm giving out business cards, and using this blog as a showcase for writing, then it's not really appropriate for it to be full of personal angst and boobless lamenting. You get my drift.

I hoped Blogger would let me do something straightforward, like hide chosen posts from view. But it doesn't. You have to delete them, and I don't want to do that. I suppose I could copy them all into Word documents, and then delete them. That would be quite a job, though. My research on the issue has turned up the suggestion that you can open the posts, then save them as drafts, which effectively hides them. I suppose I could try. Does anyone know if you lose the comments if you do that? (Comments = best bit!)

Or... here's what I'm thinking of doing. I'm wondering whether to have two blogs. The first would be essentially the whole Not wrong, just different English woman in America gig. Though I think it will become less personal, and more simply a reflection on life in a different culture. I've felt for a while that I've outgrown the whole mummy blogger stage, and that's another aspect I feel uncomfortable about. It feels ok telling stories about children when they are young, but mine are growing up. I'm less happy about sharing them with you all. India Knight said the same at Cyber Mummy, so I'm in good company. But I still have plenty to say about life here, even without them.

The second blog would be where I would dump all the uber-personal old posts from this one. Following the oft-quoted truth that blogging is cheaper than therapy, I would use it to write when I needed to write. I suspect that it would turn into a rather whingey blog, but bloggers quite like reading each other's whinges, so that probably wouldn't matter. I'm guessing the posts would be sporadic, but that's another good sign, isn't it? This second blog would be password protected. That would feel safer.

What do you think, Bloggy Friends? I thought I'd run this by you, and see what your opinions are. Would you follow two blogs? Would you miss the unpigeon-holeable untidiness that is currently Not wrong, just different?

And how possible is it to move posts from one blog to another?

I was going to leave you with Captain Sensible's Stop the World, I'm getting off, but wouldn't you know? Youtube couldn't come up with it. So here is Happy Talk, which seems equally appropriate for a post about blogging. If nothing else, you always know you're going to get the occasional fabulous track from the '80s here. So go on, put it on, minimise the window, and do whatever you were going to do next in another window (the video quality is appalling so you won't miss anything). You'll be tapping your toes for 3 minutes and 17 seconds, and thanking me for it. It's quintessential irony.